A Deposit of Early Medieval Iron Objects from Scraptoft, Leicestershire

Abstract

A DEPOSIT OF FIVE iron objects found at Scraptoft, near Leicester, is interesting for the range of activities represented: woodworking, cultivation, harvesting and warfare. The objects are described and their dating discussed together with possible reasons for their deposition. Hoards of early medieval tools and weapons are well known in Britain, but iron objects seem surprisingly common on what appear to be Anglo-Saxon rural sites. The possibilities of ritual deposition and of these hoards symbolically representing the Anglo-Saxon economy are also considered.

Notes

2 Leahy 2003, 169–71.

3 Thomas, 2008, 334–98.

4 Accession Number X.A34·2000.

5 SMR site 60NE.BD. An account of the fieldwalking was published in the Trans Leics Archaeol Soc 64 (1990). The Portable Antiquities Scheme’s database, <www.finds.org.uk>, which records archaeological finds made by metal detector users, contains nothing from the area of relevance to the hoard.

6 Thomas 2012, 1–2.

7 Thomas 2012, 1–2; Lab code SUERC-35927 (GU24773).

8 Pitts 2011, 7.

9 Tresemer 1981, 20–4.

10 Hodges 1905, 213–14, pl facing p 214.

11 Leahy 2003, 170.

12 Edwards 2002.

13 Haldenby 1994, 56, pl 1.

14 <www.finds.org.uk> PASLANCUM-F821A3; F80DD5; F7C1B2; and F798A6.

15 Fox 1923, 300.

16 Edwards 2002.

17 Ibid, 115.

18 Lucas 1882

19 Gale 1989, 72.

20 Lang and Ager 1989, 106–7.

21 Böhner 1958, 130–45.

22 Peirce 2002, 76.

23 Ottaway 2009b, 256–67; Leahy 2003, 17–18, fig 11.

24 Leahy 2003, 170.

25 Fox 1923, 259, pl 36, 3, 11.

26 Meaney 1964, 64.

27 Morris 1983, 29–30.

28 Stenton 1957, pl 38.

29 Goodall 2011, 22.

30 Intensive excavation at Flixborough led to the recovery of, amongst many other finds, 562 pins (407 non- ferrous, 114 iron and 41 bone (Rogers 2009, 32–79)) and 250 iron knife blades (Ottaway 2009b, 203–31).

31 Ottaway, 2009a, 173–4, fig 5·5, 245, fig 6·1.

32 Hamerow, 2006, 1–30: Morris and Jervis, 2011, 66–81.

33 Thomas 2008, 334–98.

34 Thomas, 2008, 386.

35 The Stidriggs hoard was found by an Army Ordnance Clearance Team 750 mm deep in peat.

36 The drainage operations that resulted in the discovery of the Westley Waterless hoard are likely to have been field drains, not the reclamation of marshland. Hughes’ first account of the find (1881) makes no mention of it being discovered ‘deep in clay’ this was added by Fox more that 40 years later (1923).

37 Arwidsson and Berg 1985, 11–12, pl 5, no. 26; pl 17, nos 26–8.

38 Bourke 1980, 52–67.

39 Hinton 2000, 44–7, fig 30–31.

40 Cowgill 2009, 267–77.

41 Ottaway 2009a, 173–4; 245.

42 Edwards 2002, 124.

43 Cf Youngs 1989, 204–5, item 207.

44 Leahy 2003, 17–18, fig 11.

45 Morris 1983, 27–39.

46 Prichard 1991, 135, 137, pl 3·14, no 26.

47 Grattan and Singer 1952, 37.

48 Deuteronomy xxvii, 5.

49 Leahy and Bland, 2009.

50 Hamerow 2006, 4–7, tab 1.